Broadway’s Lost
Treasures Collection (Acorn Media)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Episodes: B
With the palpable comeback of the theatrical film musical,
Acorn Media’s releases in the Broadway’s Lost Treasures series has been
very welcome, digging into almost forgotten video archives of often rarely
taped or otherwise captured classic moments that are always interesting to
watch, no matter the video quality or which performance may appeal more than
another. All three volumes and an
additional DVD volume on Plays have been collected in the new Broadway’s
Lost Treasures Collection.
Though other critics will soon cover the three volumes in
more detail, this review will talk about highlights and surprises from
each. The first volume offers Broadway
Divas with Carol Channing, Angela Lansbury and Patti LuPone particularly
good, while Leading Men has Zero Mostel, Paul Lynde and Yul Brynner in
particularly great form. Dancin’
has Gwen Verdon & Chita Rivera from Chicago making for an
interesting comparison to their big screen counterparts, plus Tommy Tune &
Twiggy team up for My One & Only and both Joel Grey and Jerry Orbach
get their highlight numbers. Annie
and Betty Buckley in Cats round out the regular highlights. Bonnie Franklin (pre-One Day At A Time)
doing the title song from Applause in 1970 and Patti LuPone powering
through Buenos Aries from Evita are standouts.
The II volume has Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur in
Mame and Patti LuPone in Anything Goes as
highlights of The Leads, while All Singing, All Dancing
has four segments including Nell Carter leading Ain’t Misbehavin’ and
you get four more clips in Revivals & Records Breakers; five in the
bonus section. The most interesting
bonus clip is Katharine Hepburn as Coco, which is underrated.
The III volume is split into Acts and
includes Debbie Allen in West Side Story, the cast of Fosse, Zero
Mostel again in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Ethel
Merman doing a medley, Kristin Chenoweth in You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown
and Angela Lansbury in Gypsy among the four bonus clips.
The Best Of The Tony Awards: Plays has
dramatic clips, but having them out of context is sometimes awkward and the set
ups here are not as effective as they are in the previous DVDs. Still, several scenes from August Wilson
plays are interesting, as well as Art Carney in Lovers. There are 19 clips in all and no extras, but
even with stars like Maggie Smith, John Lithgow, Annette Benning, Timothy Daly,
Jane Alexander, Joan Allen, Madeline Kahn, Linda Lavin, Kevin Klein and Morgan
Freeman, the clips never seem long enough and maybe Acorn should find entire
versions of these plays to put on DVD.
It is still a nice plus of a disc.
The 1.33 X 1 image varies in quality throughout as most of
the footage is NTSC analog videotape over several decades, usually in color,
looking as good as it can. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 sound is stereo, but simple at best and often stereo-boosted
monophonic sound. Extras include text
about the performances, extras performances on the Musicals volumes and
Playbill covers for all the programs on all DVDs. This is yet another solid, valuable set from Acorn.
- Nicholas Sheffo
